September 17, 2025 • 25 mins
In this powerful Soul Talks conversation, Shaun Proulx opens up about the courage it took to come out publicly as HIV positive, the full-circle moment of interviewing Oprah, and the life-changing lessons he’s learned along the way. With humor, honesty, and wisdom, Shaun reminds us to stop beating ourselves up for being human — and shares his simple secret to true happiness.If you’ve ever struggled with shame, stigma, or self-doubt, this episode will leave you inspired to live more freely and joyfully in the present moment.Subscribe for more soulful conversations.Connect with us:Get your copy of "He's Not Coming Back": https://bit.ly/40qGX6YConnect with our guest:Shaun Proulx’s website: https://www.shaunproulxmedia.comFollow Shaun on Instagram: @shaunproulxmediaincFind Shaun on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShaunProulx?mibextid=LQQJ4d
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
So within that six month transformation journey, that public one
that you had, and I'd love to explore that some
that's when you announced to the public that you were
HIV positive. Yeah, and I found so much courage, you know.
I thought that had to have taken extraordinary courage on
your part. And I don't know if I'm right about this.
(00:25):
I've read so many things about you, but I feel
like somewhere in there you said to someone something to
the effect of, I've got HIV. It just makes me human.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah. I didn't tell anybody that when I was diagnosed.
I didn't tell my family. I told a couple of
friends of mine who were HIV positive, and I told
partners when I had sex with them that I was.
But I really didn't tell anybody because my career is
just taking off. I was writing for Canada's national newspaper
on a regular basis. I just landed my first radio gig,
(00:59):
and I didn't want to be known as the HIV
positive whatever radio hoster writer. I didn't want that tag
on me. I didn't want to limit my opportunities either,
because the stigma around HIV and AIDS is still massive.
We're still seen as dirty we're still seen as wrong,
We're still seeing as you know, slutty, whatever the terms
(01:21):
our people want to use. So I didn't want any
of that association. But when you keep something private, over
time it begins to bear the weight of a secret.
And it came to be that I was chairing the
National AIDS Walk for ACT, the AIDS Committee of Toronto,
and that summer preparing for it, I was at ACT
(01:42):
a lot, and I saw a lot of people facing stigma,
self stigma and stigma from other people. And I have
never felt any self stigma myself. I've always felt cool
about being HIV positive. I never beat myself up. I
didn't play the blame game to somebody else. I didn't
(02:02):
play the blame game with myself. I had a deep
piece about it. And so I was watching these people
endure the things that were enduring, and I thought, well,
I have a name, and I'm a happy guy, and
I have success going on in my life. And at
the time I was married and had a wonderful husband,
and I thought I could do something by coming out
(02:25):
as HIV to just show that it's not something to
be ashamed of. And so I did it on the
CBC the weekend of the AIDS Walk, Well, I was
sitting there in my chair waiting to go on, and
I wanted to bolt, like I thought, what kind of
mistake am I about to make? It was live, the
(02:48):
host was queuing up the introduction, and I just wanted
I had to literally physically hold onto the arms of
the chair to keep myself from getting up and leaving.
And that's when I just made the the statement that
we're all human and all I did was a human act.
I had sex, and I had unprotected sex. And I
(03:09):
don't know anybody who had sex, who has not ever
had unprotected sex, who has a track record of wear
a condom every single time. I don't know that person.
I don't think they exist. And we beat ourselves up
for being human. We beat ourselves up for having fat thighs.
We beat ourselves up for having a low bank account.
We beat ourselves up for eating too much sugar, we
beat ourselves up for being a marriage that isn't working.
(03:29):
We beat ourselves up for being at bed positive. And
we've got to stop beating ourselves up for being human.
Was the point that I wanted to make.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
How did you feel in that interview? As you were
saying it and how did the interviewer or receive it.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
By that time, I disclosed and that was all I
had to do was say that I'm HIV positive. And
then I was fine but getting the words out and
I was starting to shake, which is not me at all.
I'm not. Yeah, I know, So it was weird to
be anxious like that. Once I'd said it, then I
was on a role. I was fine with it, and
(04:09):
I think the interview or reacted very well to it.
But I think it hit home with a lot of
listeners because the producer called me later on in the
day and said, our emails have been bombarded with emails
from people saying they really loved what you said today.
(04:30):
So mission accomplished.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah that was just huge and incredibly courageous and an
active activism.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, thank you, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So tell me about well, I'd love to hear about
the OPRAH interview. My question was going to be something
the effective what's the most interesting interview you've ever done?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Interesting? I think they're all interesting on different levels. I
mean the Oprah interview was a gag because we had
we had gotten the okay for the interview. I was
over the moon, and then for the next few weeks
we were sort of in Oprah's world, meaning promo materials
(05:18):
that we were putting out for the interview all had
to be approved by their team, and the photo of
me had to kind of match the photo of her,
so if it was lit a certain way, mine needed
to be adjusted to like all the nitty gritty and
what was I going to talk to her about and
what I wanted to do. The only reason I ever
wanted to interview Oprah, besides the fact she's the Queen
(05:40):
of interviewers, is to thank her. Because when I was
in finance, I was at a client's I was at
Halifax out on the East Coast, and I'd gotten me
to a client and he had to cancel that day.
So I was home in my hotel room and I
had been mulling over leaving finance and pursuing my creative ambitions.
(06:04):
And Oprah was on and she had a young evanzant
with her, and there starting around the stage like two
spiritual peacocks and talking about all this stuff. And then
Oprah looked at the camera and she said, if you
take one step towards the universe, the universe takes nine
steps towards you, and that went through me. And I
heard that and I trusted her for some reason on
(06:27):
what she said. And I went down to the gift
shop and I got a pen and paper and some
markers and stuff like that, and it was a big
pad of paper, and I began to doodle all the
things I thought I could be, and I was audacious
about it. I was going to do this, I was
going to do that, and I would write down actor, writer, speaker,
and I just filled this page with ideas for my life.
(06:51):
And on the bottom right hand corner I drew a
stick figure myself with a mic, and on the mic
I wrote the sean Prusia. And so to fast forward,
I know, so to fast forward.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
You're like the master of manifesting.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
To have Oprah on the show that I wrote down
that I could have after she told me I could have,
it was like, as she said, when I told her, so,
that's that's a full circle moment to be with her there.
And so by that time I designed a very nice
life for myself. And I wanted to say thank you
because that changed my life. That moment of her television show.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Well, what did you ask her?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, so I meditated in the cab all the way
to the studio. I got to the studio and her
team called my assistant and said, we're all set for
you here. And so we got into the studio and
I was just trying to not I don't get nervous,
but I was. I was nervous. It was Oprah. And
(08:01):
so the phone rang and my producer picked it up.
And you can hear the other person on the on
the line on that phone, it's a cheap phone, and
he said, serious, exam the Sean prucio. And I heard
Sean and Oprah this grump, angry lady. Oh no, she
(08:26):
was not happy, like you could hear it. And she
didn't even catch that. It was not Sean speaking. It
was the producer speaking. And he goes, I'll bring Sean
on right now. And so I thought, what what kind
of Oprah am I getting? I was expecting, you get
a car, you get a car, you get a car,
and I got Oprah. And not only that, but she
(08:48):
was twenty minutes late.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So during that time of waiting, my balloon kept deflating, deflating, deflating, deflating.
They just said they were ready for me, and so
as the time I god went by. So when all
this happened, I was feeling kind of deflated, and the
phone rang and we perked up, and then she was grumpy, wumpy,
And I had planned to start the interview by telling
(09:12):
her the story I just told you, which is the
shortest story on the planet. So I'm talking and talking
and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking,
and she sort of gave a flat answer after that,
and then I asked her another question and we got
to talking about some other things above the power of
(09:33):
her first step. I wanted to frame it around what
she'd said on her TV show that day, that the
universe takes you take one step towards the universe, universe
takes nine towards you. And so we're talking about the
power of a first step, and then I said something
and she laughed, and as soon as she laughed, I
was like, Okay, I can relax. And we had a
great conversation after that. And she was only supposed to
(09:55):
give me ten minutes and we talked for almost thirty. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Wow, yeah, that's quite the story.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
After we finished taping, I didn't remember saying a word
of it. It took me five days to listen to
it because I thought for sure i'd left it up.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Oh my gosh. And you know they call you the
gay Opera of Canada.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, that's that's something that came out in a Huffington Post. Yeah,
it was stuck.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I mean it's pretty good, but it's a lot to
live up to. And I certainly don't know Oprah a.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Very interesting interview. You get your own space, you don't,
you don't even need to be compared.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But yeah, I prefer to do my own thing.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
But at the same time, you know, she.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Has interviewing, had said for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, has there ever been an interview? Has there ever
been an interview where it just really went south in
a way you didn't know how to recover it.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I think it's two things. When you say that there
was a Project Runway, I think he won. Early days
of Project Runway, he was coming on the show and
I went out to say hi to him in the
green room and he was putting on his makeup. He
had his compact and it was maybe putting on a
(11:19):
lip bomb or lip gloss or whatever, and I extended
my hand to say hello, and he didn't even look up.
He was like just kept doing his lips and he
was like rude. And then I went to shake his
hand and he said hello, and he wouldn't take my
hand and it was just like full of himself. And
that was hard to go into and pretend to be
(11:40):
interested and interested in somebody who's just been kind of
rude in a way, because usually people it's so funny
because the people who are you think of his A
list come on and they are amazing to talk to.
They're prepared, they know your name, they've looked you up,
they they're they're on, they know what to do. It's
(12:02):
this the reality show sort of like B list or
C list people that come on, and they're the ones
that are hard because they're full of their own sort
of they're believing their own pr do you know what
I mean? They haven't they're not professionals. Yeah. And then
once I had Carol Channing on the show. Do you
(12:23):
remember Carol Channing from hell Adelia? And we only had
fifteen minutes with her, but she was off the rails
and she wanted to sing a song and she started
she broke into song and I couldn't stop her from
bringing a song, and we were like three minutes over,
four minutes over, but she's still singing your song. She's
not taking any of my eggs acues. She kept singing
(12:45):
your song. It made for a really good listen, like,
because I'm trying to I'm trying to control the beast
and she's just like a runaway train.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, she had to be super old.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
She was pretty old. Oh, and her husband Harry was
on the other line listening, so she kept saying, Harry,
what was what year was that? What restaurant was that? Again?
What was I wearing that day? I don't know. I
don't remember, mab. It was just like this what I do?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
No, but I think that's probably incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, I want to go back just a minute. They're
a couple of things that I'd love to hear about.
One is, so you're the oldest of four boys, right.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Three boys unless there's a fourth that I don't know about.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Okay, who knows?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Unless you know something I don't.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I don't. Were they accepting of you because you obviously
came out very young.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I came out in my late twenties.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So not that young, but as a teenager, you're dressing
up and.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh, I just think they thought I was like weird
when I was doing that. I don't think they saw
that as particularly gay. I know that they. I would
often get teased for being effeminate, which I was as
a little boy, and so I always got into trouble
for that sort of thing with my dad, and my
(14:12):
brothers would tease me. My brothers had the nicknames Moose
and Tiger, and my nickname was Bunny, so I got
rased that way a lot. But were they accepting when
I came out very accepting. I maintained that I think
(14:36):
this is probably true for a lot of families. There's
a unconscious bias. I think that is internal in a
lot of families when there's a gay kid, there that
a lot of I'm not saying everybody, so don't write
me nasty letters. I just think that a lot of
straight people think that they are above gay people, and
(15:02):
that manifests in the day to day interactions. Every gay
person listening to this will know what I'm talking about
when we talk about things like Christmas time, making family plans.
If you're gay and you're single, your vote often doesn't
count or your needs or your desires for Christmas or
(15:26):
Thanksgiving or whatever don't come into play. Because if you've
got straight people with kids, they're higher on the ladder
of They get more votes than you, they get more
priority than you. And so I think there's that in
my situation, But it's not the same as homophobia. It's
(15:51):
just the way society sort of works. And I think
if a people are listening to this, they know what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Was your mother alive when you came out?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, I came out to her last. We had such
a good relationship and we laughed hard together and would
go shopping and things like that, and I'd make her
spend more money than she intended and she sort of
delighted and that, and I just appreciated the relationship so
(16:23):
much that I didn't want to rock about it. I
didn't want to lose that or I didn't want to
lose her love. And it's so crazy to me at
fifty six to think I would have ever lost my
mother's love. But I was twenty seven at the time
and didn't have the tools that I have now as
a person, and I was really afraid of losing that.
And then I'd applied to become a big brother. Do
(16:45):
you have big brothers in the States, Yeah, And they
were pretty homophobic for a while there. They didn't allow
gay men to do it, but they'd changed that rule,
but one of the rules they still had in place
was that you had to be completely out to your
family because your little brother would be told that you're gay,
(17:07):
and if he ever said something to your family and
you weren't out, they didn't want the responsibility of having
outed me, right, And so they said I couldn't be
a big brother because I wasn't out to my mother,
and I really wanted to be a big brother. And
so I went home that night and I called my
mom and told her. And my mom's British, so they
(17:28):
have a habit of, you know, hearing what they want
to hear, not hearing what they don't want to hear,
sweeping things under the rug. And so she said, well,
I always wondered if you were, but I wasn't sure.
And I was like, Mom, I mean, there have been
red flags since you caught me in your baby doll
(17:48):
nighty when I was years old, right, didn't you know? Then?
Didn't you know? When I showed up to my brother's
wedding with a man as my date.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
She just did I want to know, But I would
think that in her subconscious she knew.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I think deep down inside she knew. But things have changed,
obviously for the better. But back then you didn't want
to find out that your kid was gay. I just
had a new mother on my show and I said,
do you ever think about maybe one day your kid
will be a wonderful, beautiful queer person. And she said,
(18:28):
I have thought about that. I've thought about that a lot.
I don't think that's the way parenting was back in
the seventies and eighties, that parents didn't have that conversation
with themselves and so, and it was a different world
back then. It was harder to be gay. In fact,
something that changed my life once was I had a
psychic on my show and she was promoting her book,
(18:52):
but she kept saying, there's a man trying to come
through right now, and it feels like in my mouth
that I've smoked three packs of cigarettes right now. And
he starts with a D and I've got to let
him on because he's insistent on talking. And my dad's
name was David, and he smoked three packs of cigarettes
a day, and so she brings him through and he said,
(19:17):
you need to know that I was never upset about
you being gay. I thought it was my fault for
being a bad father. I could tell you were gay,
and I thought i'd done a bad job parenting you,
that I hadn't done the right things. And so I
love you no matter who you are. But that's what
(19:38):
it was between us. It wasn't homophobia. It was me
thinking I'd done a bad job of being your dad.
And that changed because I went around thinking I had
a homophobic father in my whole life, and the fact
that he was instead blaming himself, and that's what I
was witnessing in his behavior.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Was that before after your experience.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
On this that was after, So that just made it
e It was.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Full circle at that point there. Yeah, that's incredible, And
I have two questions for you before we have to close.
Was he abusive to you because you were an effeminate child.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I think he You see, there was one night where
he called me a pansy and he pushed me and
I went flying under the couch, And to me, that
was an active homophobia. But when I look at it
through the lens of hey was blaming himself for me
being gay. That anger and stuff wasn't about me being gay.
(20:38):
That anger was his own anger towards himself for having
made me gay by not being a good time. I see,
Does that make sense? The reframing that information allowed me
to look at him through.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Okay, So my other question. I have a number of
gay friends, but a dear, dear friend of mine. His
name is Joel, and he's the son of two ministers,
so he grew up with a lot of religiosity, not
necessarily a spiritual path around him, and I think he
waited till his twenties maybe to come out, but he's
(21:13):
spent he's in his mid forties now, and he's spent
a lot of his life really wrestling with you know,
I had all these experiences, these God experiences as a child.
I feel like they were real experiences with God, and
yet in coming out, I feel distanced from God. And
he's you know, he's really it's really been a very
hard journey for him. I think at this point he
(21:36):
is somewhat peaceful with it. Can you just walk me through?
And I know that's a big topic, but can you
walk me through what your path has been spiritually and
whatever the God of your understanding is in accepting you
as a gay man.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I'm not a religious person. I do believe in the universe.
I believe in love. I believe in a higher power.
And I don't think that higher power made gay people
so that it could sit around and have someone to hate.
I think that it made that higher It made you
in the fullness and the full beauty of who you
are now today, and you should revel in that and
(22:20):
that you're loved beyond measure.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I love that. I love that I will be sharing
this interview with him.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah. I have a lot of friends who grew up
in religious homes and they battle with the same sort
of situation that you've described. They feel disconnected from God.
But that to me is because you're thinking, here, we
go to the thoughts. You're thinking, thoughts that feel bad
to you about this subject, and you've got a contour.
(22:48):
You're thinking a little bit, and start telling a story,
even if it's I like the idea of embracing God
more in my life. I like the idea of feeling
God back in my life is a better thought. And
I don't have God in moment I'm distanced.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
It's just like we were talking before, bringing the positive
thought and changes.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I like the idea of it's a good trick, because
you can say that about anything when you're stuck. I
like the idea of God being back in my life.
We'll bring him closer to God.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
That's beautiful. I can't wait to share that with him.
So as we close today, could you give our listeners.
You've given us so much, truly, you've given us so
much wonderful and funny and spiritual to chew on. But
could you give us just one of your wonderful, provocative
(23:39):
ways to kind of live in the world.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I like the idea of the secret to long term
happiness is to be happy today.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Live in the present. This is the day we have.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, yeah, you only have this now moment, this now moment,
this now moment, and life is a string of this
now moments. If you can just be happy in this
now moment, find a reason to be happy, focus on
something more powerful, focusing mechanisms, find something to focus on
that brings you joy, and turn away from the things
that don't, and then you have a string of this
(24:14):
now moments that were wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
My life hasn't been perfect, but I really love my
life and I feel blessed in it, and I can
look back and say that for the majority of it,
I have been very happy, and I think that's possible
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Thank you, Sean. You you are a blessing to me,
and I am so proud of your life and all
that you give and do in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I like you so much, Terresa, I like you so much.
To touch, I really like you. Yeah, yeah, I'd like
to stay in touch. I felt that one show. I
thought I really like her.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I felt the same.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Let's do that, Okay, let's say in touch, all right,
in touch
So within that six month transformation journey, that public one
that you had, and I'd love to explore that some
that's when you announced to the public that you were
HIV positive. Yeah, and I found so much courage, you know.
I thought that had to have taken extraordinary courage on
your part. And I don't know if I'm right about this.
(00:25):
I've read so many things about you, but I feel
like somewhere in there you said to someone something to
the effect of, I've got HIV. It just makes me human.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah. I didn't tell anybody that when I was diagnosed.
I didn't tell my family. I told a couple of
friends of mine who were HIV positive, and I told
partners when I had sex with them that I was.
But I really didn't tell anybody because my career is
just taking off. I was writing for Canada's national newspaper
on a regular basis. I just landed my first radio gig,
(00:59):
and I didn't want to be known as the HIV
positive whatever radio hoster writer. I didn't want that tag
on me. I didn't want to limit my opportunities either,
because the stigma around HIV and AIDS is still massive.
We're still seen as dirty we're still seen as wrong,
We're still seeing as you know, slutty, whatever the terms
(01:21):
our people want to use. So I didn't want any
of that association. But when you keep something private, over
time it begins to bear the weight of a secret.
And it came to be that I was chairing the
National AIDS Walk for ACT, the AIDS Committee of Toronto,
and that summer preparing for it, I was at ACT
(01:42):
a lot, and I saw a lot of people facing stigma,
self stigma and stigma from other people. And I have
never felt any self stigma myself. I've always felt cool
about being HIV positive. I never beat myself up. I
didn't play the blame game to somebody else. I didn't
(02:02):
play the blame game with myself. I had a deep
piece about it. And so I was watching these people
endure the things that were enduring, and I thought, well,
I have a name, and I'm a happy guy, and
I have success going on in my life. And at
the time I was married and had a wonderful husband,
and I thought I could do something by coming out
(02:25):
as HIV to just show that it's not something to
be ashamed of. And so I did it on the
CBC the weekend of the AIDS Walk, Well, I was
sitting there in my chair waiting to go on, and
I wanted to bolt, like I thought, what kind of
mistake am I about to make? It was live, the
(02:48):
host was queuing up the introduction, and I just wanted
I had to literally physically hold onto the arms of
the chair to keep myself from getting up and leaving.
And that's when I just made the the statement that
we're all human and all I did was a human act.
I had sex, and I had unprotected sex. And I
(03:09):
don't know anybody who had sex, who has not ever
had unprotected sex, who has a track record of wear
a condom every single time. I don't know that person.
I don't think they exist. And we beat ourselves up
for being human. We beat ourselves up for having fat thighs.
We beat ourselves up for having a low bank account.
We beat ourselves up for eating too much sugar, we
beat ourselves up for being a marriage that isn't working.
(03:29):
We beat ourselves up for being at bed positive. And
we've got to stop beating ourselves up for being human.
Was the point that I wanted to make.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
How did you feel in that interview? As you were
saying it and how did the interviewer or receive it.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
By that time, I disclosed and that was all I
had to do was say that I'm HIV positive. And
then I was fine but getting the words out and
I was starting to shake, which is not me at all.
I'm not. Yeah, I know, So it was weird to
be anxious like that. Once I'd said it, then I
was on a role. I was fine with it, and
(04:09):
I think the interview or reacted very well to it.
But I think it hit home with a lot of
listeners because the producer called me later on in the
day and said, our emails have been bombarded with emails
from people saying they really loved what you said today.
(04:30):
So mission accomplished.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Yeah that was just huge and incredibly courageous and an
active activism.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah, thank you, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
So tell me about well, I'd love to hear about
the OPRAH interview. My question was going to be something
the effective what's the most interesting interview you've ever done?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Interesting? I think they're all interesting on different levels. I
mean the Oprah interview was a gag because we had
we had gotten the okay for the interview. I was
over the moon, and then for the next few weeks
we were sort of in Oprah's world, meaning promo materials
(05:18):
that we were putting out for the interview all had
to be approved by their team, and the photo of
me had to kind of match the photo of her,
so if it was lit a certain way, mine needed
to be adjusted to like all the nitty gritty and
what was I going to talk to her about and
what I wanted to do. The only reason I ever
wanted to interview Oprah, besides the fact she's the Queen
(05:40):
of interviewers, is to thank her. Because when I was
in finance, I was at a client's I was at
Halifax out on the East Coast, and I'd gotten me
to a client and he had to cancel that day.
So I was home in my hotel room and I
had been mulling over leaving finance and pursuing my creative ambitions.
(06:04):
And Oprah was on and she had a young evanzant
with her, and there starting around the stage like two
spiritual peacocks and talking about all this stuff. And then
Oprah looked at the camera and she said, if you
take one step towards the universe, the universe takes nine
steps towards you, and that went through me. And I
heard that and I trusted her for some reason on
(06:27):
what she said. And I went down to the gift
shop and I got a pen and paper and some
markers and stuff like that, and it was a big
pad of paper, and I began to doodle all the
things I thought I could be, and I was audacious
about it. I was going to do this, I was
going to do that, and I would write down actor, writer, speaker,
and I just filled this page with ideas for my life.
(06:51):
And on the bottom right hand corner I drew a
stick figure myself with a mic, and on the mic
I wrote the sean Prusia. And so to fast forward,
I know, so to fast forward.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
You're like the master of manifesting.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
To have Oprah on the show that I wrote down
that I could have after she told me I could have,
it was like, as she said, when I told her, so,
that's that's a full circle moment to be with her there.
And so by that time I designed a very nice
life for myself. And I wanted to say thank you
because that changed my life. That moment of her television show.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Well, what did you ask her?
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, so I meditated in the cab all the way
to the studio. I got to the studio and her
team called my assistant and said, we're all set for
you here. And so we got into the studio and
I was just trying to not I don't get nervous,
but I was. I was nervous. It was Oprah. And
(08:01):
so the phone rang and my producer picked it up.
And you can hear the other person on the on
the line on that phone, it's a cheap phone, and
he said, serious, exam the Sean prucio. And I heard
Sean and Oprah this grump, angry lady. Oh no, she
(08:26):
was not happy, like you could hear it. And she
didn't even catch that. It was not Sean speaking. It
was the producer speaking. And he goes, I'll bring Sean
on right now. And so I thought, what what kind
of Oprah am I getting? I was expecting, you get
a car, you get a car, you get a car,
and I got Oprah. And not only that, but she
(08:48):
was twenty minutes late.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
So during that time of waiting, my balloon kept deflating, deflating, deflating, deflating.
They just said they were ready for me, and so
as the time I god went by. So when all
this happened, I was feeling kind of deflated, and the
phone rang and we perked up, and then she was grumpy, wumpy,
And I had planned to start the interview by telling
(09:12):
her the story I just told you, which is the
shortest story on the planet. So I'm talking and talking
and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking,
and she sort of gave a flat answer after that,
and then I asked her another question and we got
to talking about some other things above the power of
(09:33):
her first step. I wanted to frame it around what
she'd said on her TV show that day, that the
universe takes you take one step towards the universe, universe
takes nine towards you. And so we're talking about the
power of a first step, and then I said something
and she laughed, and as soon as she laughed, I
was like, Okay, I can relax. And we had a
great conversation after that. And she was only supposed to
(09:55):
give me ten minutes and we talked for almost thirty. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Wow, yeah, that's quite the story.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
After we finished taping, I didn't remember saying a word
of it. It took me five days to listen to
it because I thought for sure i'd left it up.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Oh my gosh. And you know they call you the
gay Opera of Canada.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, that's that's something that came out in a Huffington Post. Yeah,
it was stuck.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
I mean it's pretty good, but it's a lot to
live up to. And I certainly don't know Oprah a.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Very interesting interview. You get your own space, you don't,
you don't even need to be compared.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
But yeah, I prefer to do my own thing.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
But at the same time, you know, she.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Has interviewing, had said for sure.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, has there ever been an interview? Has there ever
been an interview where it just really went south in
a way you didn't know how to recover it.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I think it's two things. When you say that there
was a Project Runway, I think he won. Early days
of Project Runway, he was coming on the show and
I went out to say hi to him in the
green room and he was putting on his makeup. He
had his compact and it was maybe putting on a
(11:19):
lip bomb or lip gloss or whatever, and I extended
my hand to say hello, and he didn't even look up.
He was like just kept doing his lips and he
was like rude. And then I went to shake his
hand and he said hello, and he wouldn't take my
hand and it was just like full of himself. And
that was hard to go into and pretend to be
(11:40):
interested and interested in somebody who's just been kind of
rude in a way, because usually people it's so funny
because the people who are you think of his A
list come on and they are amazing to talk to.
They're prepared, they know your name, they've looked you up,
they they're they're on, they know what to do. It's
(12:02):
this the reality show sort of like B list or
C list people that come on, and they're the ones
that are hard because they're full of their own sort
of they're believing their own pr do you know what
I mean? They haven't they're not professionals. Yeah. And then
once I had Carol Channing on the show. Do you
(12:23):
remember Carol Channing from hell Adelia? And we only had
fifteen minutes with her, but she was off the rails
and she wanted to sing a song and she started
she broke into song and I couldn't stop her from
bringing a song, and we were like three minutes over,
four minutes over, but she's still singing your song. She's
not taking any of my eggs acues. She kept singing
(12:45):
your song. It made for a really good listen, like,
because I'm trying to I'm trying to control the beast
and she's just like a runaway train.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Well, she had to be super old.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
She was pretty old. Oh, and her husband Harry was
on the other line listening, so she kept saying, Harry,
what was what year was that? What restaurant was that? Again?
What was I wearing that day? I don't know. I
don't remember, mab. It was just like this what I do?
Speaker 1 (13:12):
No, but I think that's probably incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
It was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, I want to go back just a minute. They're
a couple of things that I'd love to hear about.
One is, so you're the oldest of four boys, right.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Three boys unless there's a fourth that I don't know about.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Okay, who knows?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Unless you know something I don't.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I don't. Were they accepting of you because you obviously
came out very young.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
I came out in my late twenties.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
So not that young, but as a teenager, you're dressing
up and.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh, I just think they thought I was like weird
when I was doing that. I don't think they saw
that as particularly gay. I know that they. I would
often get teased for being effeminate, which I was as
a little boy, and so I always got into trouble
for that sort of thing with my dad, and my
(14:12):
brothers would tease me. My brothers had the nicknames Moose
and Tiger, and my nickname was Bunny, so I got
rased that way a lot. But were they accepting when
I came out very accepting. I maintained that I think
(14:36):
this is probably true for a lot of families. There's
a unconscious bias. I think that is internal in a
lot of families when there's a gay kid, there that
a lot of I'm not saying everybody, so don't write
me nasty letters. I just think that a lot of
straight people think that they are above gay people, and
(15:02):
that manifests in the day to day interactions. Every gay
person listening to this will know what I'm talking about
when we talk about things like Christmas time, making family plans.
If you're gay and you're single, your vote often doesn't
count or your needs or your desires for Christmas or
(15:26):
Thanksgiving or whatever don't come into play. Because if you've
got straight people with kids, they're higher on the ladder
of They get more votes than you, they get more
priority than you. And so I think there's that in
my situation, But it's not the same as homophobia. It's
(15:51):
just the way society sort of works. And I think
if a people are listening to this, they know what
I'm talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Was your mother alive when you came out?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, I came out to her last. We had such
a good relationship and we laughed hard together and would
go shopping and things like that, and I'd make her
spend more money than she intended and she sort of
delighted and that, and I just appreciated the relationship so
(16:23):
much that I didn't want to rock about it. I
didn't want to lose that or I didn't want to
lose her love. And it's so crazy to me at
fifty six to think I would have ever lost my
mother's love. But I was twenty seven at the time
and didn't have the tools that I have now as
a person, and I was really afraid of losing that.
And then I'd applied to become a big brother. Do
(16:45):
you have big brothers in the States, Yeah, And they
were pretty homophobic for a while there. They didn't allow
gay men to do it, but they'd changed that rule,
but one of the rules they still had in place
was that you had to be completely out to your
family because your little brother would be told that you're gay,
(17:07):
and if he ever said something to your family and
you weren't out, they didn't want the responsibility of having
outed me, right, And so they said I couldn't be
a big brother because I wasn't out to my mother,
and I really wanted to be a big brother. And
so I went home that night and I called my
mom and told her. And my mom's British, so they
(17:28):
have a habit of, you know, hearing what they want
to hear, not hearing what they don't want to hear,
sweeping things under the rug. And so she said, well,
I always wondered if you were, but I wasn't sure.
And I was like, Mom, I mean, there have been
red flags since you caught me in your baby doll
(17:48):
nighty when I was years old, right, didn't you know? Then?
Didn't you know? When I showed up to my brother's
wedding with a man as my date.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
She just did I want to know, But I would
think that in her subconscious she knew.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I think deep down inside she knew. But things have changed,
obviously for the better. But back then you didn't want
to find out that your kid was gay. I just
had a new mother on my show and I said,
do you ever think about maybe one day your kid
will be a wonderful, beautiful queer person. And she said,
(18:28):
I have thought about that. I've thought about that a lot.
I don't think that's the way parenting was back in
the seventies and eighties, that parents didn't have that conversation
with themselves and so, and it was a different world
back then. It was harder to be gay. In fact,
something that changed my life once was I had a
psychic on my show and she was promoting her book,
(18:52):
but she kept saying, there's a man trying to come
through right now, and it feels like in my mouth
that I've smoked three packs of cigarettes right now. And
he starts with a D and I've got to let
him on because he's insistent on talking. And my dad's
name was David, and he smoked three packs of cigarettes
a day, and so she brings him through and he said,
(19:17):
you need to know that I was never upset about
you being gay. I thought it was my fault for
being a bad father. I could tell you were gay,
and I thought i'd done a bad job parenting you,
that I hadn't done the right things. And so I
love you no matter who you are. But that's what
(19:38):
it was between us. It wasn't homophobia. It was me
thinking I'd done a bad job of being your dad.
And that changed because I went around thinking I had
a homophobic father in my whole life, and the fact
that he was instead blaming himself, and that's what I
was witnessing in his behavior.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Was that before after your experience.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
On this that was after, So that just made it
e It was.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Full circle at that point there. Yeah, that's incredible, And
I have two questions for you before we have to close.
Was he abusive to you because you were an effeminate child.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I think he You see, there was one night where
he called me a pansy and he pushed me and
I went flying under the couch, And to me, that
was an active homophobia. But when I look at it
through the lens of hey was blaming himself for me
being gay. That anger and stuff wasn't about me being gay.
(20:38):
That anger was his own anger towards himself for having
made me gay by not being a good time. I see,
Does that make sense? The reframing that information allowed me
to look at him through.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Okay, So my other question. I have a number of
gay friends, but a dear, dear friend of mine. His
name is Joel, and he's the son of two ministers,
so he grew up with a lot of religiosity, not
necessarily a spiritual path around him, and I think he
waited till his twenties maybe to come out, but he's
(21:13):
spent he's in his mid forties now, and he's spent
a lot of his life really wrestling with you know,
I had all these experiences, these God experiences as a child.
I feel like they were real experiences with God, and
yet in coming out, I feel distanced from God. And
he's you know, he's really it's really been a very
hard journey for him. I think at this point he
(21:36):
is somewhat peaceful with it. Can you just walk me through?
And I know that's a big topic, but can you
walk me through what your path has been spiritually and
whatever the God of your understanding is in accepting you
as a gay man.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I'm not a religious person. I do believe in the universe.
I believe in love. I believe in a higher power.
And I don't think that higher power made gay people
so that it could sit around and have someone to hate.
I think that it made that higher It made you
in the fullness and the full beauty of who you
are now today, and you should revel in that and
(22:20):
that you're loved beyond measure.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I love that. I love that I will be sharing
this interview with him.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah. I have a lot of friends who grew up
in religious homes and they battle with the same sort
of situation that you've described. They feel disconnected from God.
But that to me is because you're thinking, here, we
go to the thoughts. You're thinking, thoughts that feel bad
to you about this subject, and you've got a contour.
(22:48):
You're thinking a little bit, and start telling a story,
even if it's I like the idea of embracing God
more in my life. I like the idea of feeling
God back in my life is a better thought. And
I don't have God in moment I'm distanced.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
It's just like we were talking before, bringing the positive
thought and changes.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I like the idea of it's a good trick, because
you can say that about anything when you're stuck. I
like the idea of God being back in my life.
We'll bring him closer to God.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
That's beautiful. I can't wait to share that with him.
So as we close today, could you give our listeners.
You've given us so much, truly, you've given us so
much wonderful and funny and spiritual to chew on. But
could you give us just one of your wonderful, provocative
(23:39):
ways to kind of live in the world.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I like the idea of the secret to long term
happiness is to be happy today.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Live in the present. This is the day we have.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, yeah, you only have this now moment, this now moment,
this now moment, and life is a string of this
now moments. If you can just be happy in this
now moment, find a reason to be happy, focus on
something more powerful, focusing mechanisms, find something to focus on
that brings you joy, and turn away from the things
that don't, and then you have a string of this
(24:14):
now moments that were wonderful.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
My life hasn't been perfect, but I really love my
life and I feel blessed in it, and I can
look back and say that for the majority of it,
I have been very happy, and I think that's possible
for everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Thank you, Sean. You you are a blessing to me,
and I am so proud of your life and all
that you give and do in the world.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
I like you so much, Terresa, I like you so much.
To touch, I really like you. Yeah, yeah, I'd like
to stay in touch. I felt that one show. I
thought I really like her.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I felt the same.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Let's do that, Okay, let's say in touch, all right,
in touch
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